


Pivot

by oracular_vernacular



Series: luminous beings: gffa vignettes [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oracular_vernacular/pseuds/oracular_vernacular
Summary: Out in the barren cold of the surface of Starkiller Base, Han stumbles upon his wounded son.Note: A friend of mine asked me to rewrite Han Solo's death scene, as he was disappointed with it in the film. So, this is what I created.
Series: luminous beings: gffa vignettes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945174
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Pivot

Leaning back against the exterior wall, he could feel the bite of the cold air slipping beneath fresh, bloodied cuts in his robes. There was some piece of shrapnel or another lodged into his side, he could feel its cruel edge against the leather of his glove as he palmed the area gently. He should have known, should have  _ anticipated _ this, he thought. But it was too late; the oscillator was compromised even as he was within it, and he’d just barely escaped the aftermath of the explosions. How narrowly that sabotage had slipped beneath his nose filled him with bile, even more than the visceral pain radiating from his wound. Without a blink of hesitation, he closed his gloved hand around the metal that jutted out of him. 

He sucked in a quick, preparatory breath. Then he let out a harsh bellowing roar, which through the vocoder in his helmet sounded much less human, as he jerked the thing out. The pain was blinding for moment. Shiny and wet, the scrap fell to the snowy ground. As he gasped, a fresh flurry of little flakes came swirling down from the scattered clouds above. He looked upwards at the fading sun.

And then he felt it again. A familiar tug in the strange leylines of the Force, closer this time. For a moment even the groan of the collapsing innards of the oscillator paused, and all was snow-quiet.

“Ben?” As soon as he heard the gravelly voice, Kylo gripped the hilt of his light saber beneath his robes with the hand that wasn’t plastered to his side and sticky with blood. His heart was pounding, breath coming in deep and even through his helmet. He hated himself for being propped up in the crevice of a metal wall when he should have been standing, for being wounded when he should have been strong. He was not ready. He wondered if he ever really could be. A figure emerged from the woods, and called out to him again. “Ben!”

“Don’t,” he growled in warning. 

“Ben, you’re hurt,” the man replied. “Let me help you.”

“No.”

“Please, son.” The word landed like cold steel through his heart, opened wounds much older than the one in his side. He sagged even more into the wall.

“No!” he barked again, searching desperately for the thing that could tip his agony over into the fury he knew much better how to wield. “Stay away from me, Han Solo.” But the old man was walking closer, brow creased with worry. Under the fabric his grip on the saber hilt tightened, thumb hovering over the ignition button, but he did not draw it out.

“At least let me take off that mask, so you can breathe,” Han insisted. Every muscle in his body wanted to recoil as he watched hands come up and push the release valves on either side of his helmet to tug it off. “That’s better.” Fresh snowflakes laid their soft, frigid kisses over his high cheeks, proud nose, his brow which bent into a scowl. They melted into his unruly black hair and clung to his eyelashes. But his body felt very far away in that moment, and all he could see was his father’s face. Even the sound of his helmet falling into the snow was distant. He looked at the ground.

“You need to leave this place.”  _ While I am too wounded to do my master’s will. _

“Not without you.” 

“It’s too late.”

“It’s not too late, Ben. It’s never too late to come home.”

“My name is Kylo Ren,” he hissed, fighting the swelling sensation of tears that mounted behind his eyes as he glanced up to glare at Han. “You want to take Ben Solo with you, but he’s gone.”

“Funny, you look just like him,” his father replied with half a wry smirk. It was just like him, to try and joke at such a moment. If his arrival had reopened old wounds, this had the effect of twisting the knife around in them. For a moment, Ben was speechless. Han glanced around as the woods got steadily darker, the final moments of the vanishing sun looming ever nearer. “Come on, Chewie’ll be here in the Falcon any minute. Come with us. We miss you.” 

“I can’t…” But his voice tangled in his throat, and he heard himself make some strange noise as he tried to gasp, sob, speak, and suppress his sob all at once.  _ It hurts,  _ he thought.  _ It hurts so much. _ The pain of his wound had opened something, as though he was finally being made to carry the pain of everything else, too, instead of merely funnelling it out of himself and into darkness. His grip on the light saber faltered a little as his hands began to shake.

“Ben,” Han said softly, and his rough palm fell against his son’s face. With that touch came a dozen memories, shards of moments scattered across his life that all meant the same thing.  _ Dad is home, Dad is leaving. _ With his mother ever busy performing her duties as Senator, those markers of arrival and departure had been the true measure of his days. He recalled stretches of loneliness and a constant, quiet fear; this was punctuated by brief stints of absolute elation-- but the fear became sharper too, heightened in the knowledge that his childish joy would end as suddenly and swiftly as it always did. There was no rhyme or reason to when or where or why Han would come and go, at least not to him. Not to a child.

“You never stay long,” Ben murmured. “How long, this time?” At this, the older man looked uncomfortable. 

“I’m not running anymore.” He might have fooled someone else, maybe even himself, trying to look resolute. But Ben was too familiar with that faint fear behind his eyes, with the hounds ever at his heels. Something in him soured when he saw it. It felt like a lie; a stillborn promise that was far too little, far too late. As anger started to bubble in his chest, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head like a needle being driven through his skull. 

**_You already know what you have to do._ **

Shame rose hot in his cheeks. His master was watching. His master, who knew full well that within him there was still a little boy who missed his dad. And here he was on the verge of tears, and of forgetting everything Han Solo had done-- or failed to do-- that led him here. To the precipice of failure. Suddenly, everything around the pair fell into shadow, lit only by the slow blink of red emergency lights on the outside of the building. The sun was gone. The Starkiller had eaten, and soon she would spit out her fire.

Dark eyes met Han’s as he felt the fulcrum of hate finally rise within him. Whether the boy hated his father or his master more, he couldn’t have said. But either way, it was Kylo, not Ben, who looked out from them now.

“No. You’re not,” he affirmed in a low, predatory growl. In one swift movement he gripped the older man with his bloody hand and spun the pair of them around, pushing Han up against the same metal he’d been supported by seconds before. He heard the sound of his light saber igniting before he truly felt his fingers grip it again, knuckles bone-white beneath their leather coverings. 

Han went stiff, shock on his face as his breath was driven from his lungs by a pain that instantly was too much to bear. He knew he would not have to bear it long. Kylo held his gaze ferociously, pinned him to the unforgiving metal with his eyes just as much as the weapon. With them he desperately probed for his answer, for something that might relieve him of the relentless struggle between light and dark.

Suddenly, hazel eyes fell back into dark ones, and Kylo froze as he looked down at  _ himself _ , crumpled up against the wall. Younger, softer, full of terror. Under his own red blade he saw Ben Solo begin to plead for his life.

_ No, please, _ he heard himself whimper. Instinctively cutting off his light saber, he watched himself slide down against the wall as his knees buckled. Pain in his chest felt raw and sudden, like he’d truly driven the blade through himself. He shook his head violently.

As quickly as it had arrived, the specter was gone. Now it was only his father’s crumpled form below him in the snow. 

“Ben,” murmured Han, but his voice was gentle and not angry or betrayed or hateful as it should have been. His son stared back, shell-shocked. He’d expected to feel  _ better _ . To feel like he was cutting something off of himself clean, to be sewn up and left to close itself with tougher tissue than what was there before. But as he watched the very last moments of his father’s life slip away into the biting wind, Kylo Ren felt the chasm within him widen into an abyss. On the other side, the shrill horror of a child’s cries were that much louder. He staggered backwards, away from whatever it was he’d just done. As he did so, pain seared up his side from the shrapnel wound and he grimaced. He was all but holding his guts in with sheer force of will.

And then, he felt something else. Like a hook that sank in and jerked him up out of his own ruin, the Force seemed to pull his attention into the distance between the trees. Though he could not see them yet, he knew it was the traitor-- and  _ her _ . 

In the crucible of his wrath, whatever passed for grief was distilled into a purer substance. The edge of it was like a razor, keen to prove that he had not made a mistake. His veneer of composure was thin, flimsy even; but it was all he needed to focus, to recede into the shadows of the trees. They would come through the barren woods, find the body. They would scream. They might even weep.

And then, they would be his. 


End file.
